


The Cynics

by LaTerraNova



Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: 19th Century, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Jane Austen Fusion, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, British Empire, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dark Past, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, France (Country), Gay Sex, Gentle Kissing, Gothic, Heartbreaking, London, M/M, Male Slash, Period-Typical Homophobia, References to Jane Austen, Regency Romance, Rough Kissing, Secrets, Slash, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Dancing, Slow Romance, Switzerland, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-07 03:00:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11614497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaTerraNova/pseuds/LaTerraNova
Summary: It is 1818, and Robert Walton is a young man living in London, having left behind the pressures of his family home to seek knowledge in the city. Victor Frankenstein followed his creation to Britain, and while the monster is now dead, he must deal with the consequences of the last few years. Life does not stand still in Georgian Britain, there are as ever, balls to attend and the impoverished to watch out for. And while Victor Frankenstein might have established himself as man of secrets, Walton has plenty of his own, not least his increasing suspicion about his new friend.





	1. A Cold Night

It was cold, the beginning of a long winter in London, where each morning Robert Walton forced himself from bed to walk to the library; keeping his head down and his arms wrapped tightly around his coat as he made his way through the hollering crowds. He disliked their manners; the way in which they unquestioningly went about their lives; the ruddy faces of rotund wives and widows that looked disapprovingly from tenement windows; the general filth of the streets and the merchants that hassled him, quietly passing by. He did not belong there, had not been permitted to; but he had mapped out his path and was determined to see it through to the end. He had spent two years abroad with the Navy and, while he was sure that the experience would prove useful in his future enterprise, his life there had not been to his liking. It was all very strict, puritannical, not at all romantic, and one had to be cast from a certain matierial; whereas Walton was of a far more vacillating nature, and his thoughts had a tendency to stray. He was preoccupied with ideas, prospects, and nutured dreams of journeying to where none had gone before; in the face of this, much, particularly the obedience of orders in the Navy, seemed to him of no point; there was no tangible goal. He was a tall man, well-built, and he felt a pressure to live up to the image; to know less, think less, feel less; yet he refused to betray himself. At times he felt possessed of superior intellect and feeling, at others, deeply ashamed of his inability to relax his strange ideals and connect to the outer world. In London his was a sparse existence, but the routine suited him. Nights were his pleasure, curled up with his volumes and insulated from the ongoing play in the arena of streets below his attic room. He would look back upon this period often, with a mixture of feelings, since it would become a time of no little importance. It is one thing to be a solitary man, accustomed to your own company, the vibrations of your own mind; but it is something else to become acquainted with yourself in true intimacy with another; for that is when a mirror is presented, should you wish to acknowledge it. 

After the money had run out, Walton began to feel his fervour ebb. The snow was falling again, thick and fast, and the street below was for once silent. He sat close to the fire and began to consider his options, which were limited, largely because he had no trade. The dream still hung before him, the sole light in his world, but yet not quite so bright now; for dampened spirits were always a cataract. He could offer his services to the whale-fishers - it would teach him, and accustom his body to the northern climates - but that would warrant a neglect of his studies, which were vital for his accomplishment and would render such hardship worthless. It was possible to write to Oxford, but it was not with ease that Walton sat over his notepaper and pondered the words that he might make use of. Although early in the night for him to retire, agitated, he rose with the intention of making for bed. Gripping a battered collection of Coleridge in vexation; so that his nails pierced the cover; he stood a moment, staring out of his window at the frozen wasteland, barely lit by a solitary gas lamp. Then came the knocking. Had he been animal of sorts Walton's ears would have pricked, for he froze like a startled hare. Surely, he thought, nobody in the house expected a visitor at such an hour, regardless of the nefarious dealings that went on. He listened intently, wondering who would come out to answer. The knocking went on, and turned into a violent banging that seemed to echo through the entire building in the deathlike silence, louder the more seconds passed. It did not appear that it was going to cease, and so Walton, adrenalin beginning to surge through his veins, gripped the fire poker - just in case - and made for the door. 

When he had reached the ground floor, however, the knocker seemed to have given up. Not quite decisively, Walton slid open the door and met with the familiar countenance of Frankenstein. He had briefly made the acquaintance of this man, who gave French tuition in the upper rooms of the library, but they had only exchanged a few words in politeness in the presence of a mutual associate, so it was with surprise that Walton now regarded him; an apparition what with his waifish figure and pale eyes lit up in the candle's glow. They surveyed each other.  
'Forgive my intrusion - but I must speak with you.' There was a tension in his voice, but yet the words had force, it was undoubtedly a command.  
'Come in.' Walton replied, instinctively. He tried to inject welcoming into his tone, but failed.  
'Thank you.' Frankenstein bowed his head a little and made into the dingy hallway. His movements were languid, as though they caused him pain, and Walton noted that he wore neither hat nor gloves and seemed to hesitate the decision. He had a slight stoop, and looked at and then away from Walton as he waited to be lead up to the rooms. Walton, still surprised and taken aback at this invasion, stood with the door held open, the cold chilling his face unpleasantly. But looking at the stranger, he felt compassion welling up inside his breast. 'Please, come in,' he reiterated, 'and sit by the fire, you must be frozen'. 

He often saw the Swiss man in the library, going to or coming back from the upstairs rooms, and his image had quite stuck in Walton's mind over the last month, so that he even dreamt of him one night. He passed by Walton's table on occasion, and was the sort to walk as the melancholic do, eyes turned toward the ground, but he had once looked; seemed to be reading the words on an old book's dust jacket, and afterwards, glanced at Walton with a curious, knowing quality in those pale eyes. Despite the lightness of colour, there was something quite dark about them. In that glance, something passed that communicated more than those few civic words on behalf of the mutual acquaintance. 

Now, Frankenstein sat on Walton's battered, broken settee, watching as he flitted about the room lighting candles. 'Walton, I recall that you mentioned studies. At which university?' He thumbed through the cast-aside Coleridge, looking at the illustrations. 'I like this.' He murmured.  
'Not at university.' Walton responded 'I've no formal education, not even the most basic schooling. I swore to teach myself.'  
'I thought you might be doing so, from your books.' Frankenstein smiled, but distractedly. There was trepidation in in the lineaments of his face. Walton awkwardly sat down beside his guest, since there was only the one sitting-place.  
'What is it that you wish to speak on?'  
'I need to relieve my mind, Walton, I feared that I would not last the night.' He said this with surprising calm, as though it were the most usual thing, such as taking a walk, or, buying a newspaper.  
'How did you find my address?'  
'I followed you. I wanted to speak with you then, but could not bring myself. I had resolved that knowledge of what I did would die with me.'  
'You fiend.' Frankenstein started at these words. 'Have you no priest, then?'  
'If you knew of my sufferings, the very Lucifer, you would not question me about priests and indeed, I could be of no denomination having set out to do what it was I so cruelly, bitterly did.'  
'No...' Walton paused 'Forgive me, I was not being serious. I am quite distracted, myself. From what you say...I am glad that you came here. You may have followed me, but I had also watched you, in the library, often and...you seemed most unhappy. And interesting. But please... you can talk to me. What oppresses you, friend?'  
'I am a terrible person.' At this, he seemed to suppress a sob, for his voice quavered. Walton waited for him to continue but when only silence ensued he spoke.  
'I am sure that you are not. Terrible people would not feel that they were so, or be so affected by what they did.' He said this only to comfort him, he was not so certain of course, but looking at Frankenstein he did not see one who could be a terrible person. He had gentle, fine features and his eyes were sorrowful and intelligent, in fact, there seemed to be a gentleness in his entire manner, and Walton was, as in the library, utterly taken in by him.  
'Then you've not heard that Russian tale.'  
'Russian tale?'  
'Never mind. Promise me, Walton, that you will not think me mad?'  
'I will not, I promise.' What a question, he thought, but yet, I doubt that he is mad, just most worked-up and his nerves are on edge, the poor man.  
'Good. And if so, well, at least you are nobody. Not to me, not to any person, and what are we but two nobody men? And what can it matter then, what is said?'  
'I beg your pardon?'  
'Oh - the only other that came upon any detail of my story was a magistrate, and that was their conclusion, that I was mad' Frankenstein looked at Walton, realising that he had let himself get carried away. 'It is destroying me - it has destroyed me...this...' he looked downwards, his index finger picking at the cuticle of his thumb. 'I was a student...'  
'Frankenstein,' Walton spoke softly, 'You can trust me to listen to whatever this is, and without any presumptions at all. You were a student, yes?'  
'At Ingolstadt. I could never have foreseen what would happen. Although perhaps it were always there, in the back of my mind. I had these dreams - I should have been happier, for I studied natural philosophy and that had been my passion from a very young age. I neglected my official studies, and took to darker...things, such was my imagination, so turned toward the morbid and yet - so vivid, that it gave me reason to believe that I had a destiny to fulfil. But yes, I was plagued by dreams - I still am, of a worse kind now - night upon night, probing me to question myself over how wrong it is to have life and yet look at death! Such was the lesson of those dreams!' He got up and began pacing the room. 'But - there you have it, Walton! From dead material, I pieced together a man, and brought it to life! It is gone now, gone! That - vile insect! But what it did? Murder? Violence? No, that is all too permanent!' He fell back upon the settee, sobbing heavily. 'I thought that I was to do something unprecedented! I thought - but look at me, what a wretch!'  
Walton watched all this with amazement, with adrenalin that flooded his heart and made it leap. 'You poor man, how you must have suffered! You say that it is gone, the...creature? What happened to it?'  
'I followed it, to London. I destroyed it.' Frankenstein was beginning to feel awfully dizzy, and as though a mist had clouded his eyes. He had to lean over, his head in his hands, trembling and desperately trying to stop himself from weeping, but now that he had began it were as though a valve had been opened, deep inside of him, and that the blood could not stop gushing out. It was horrid.  
Walton lay a hand upon his back, causing him to flinch as he always did whenever anybody tried to touch him, although he could not remember the last human contact he had had.  
'Let me fetch you some dry clothing, and I will make us saloop.'  
'Saloop?'  
'A warm drink, made from starch and sugar. I find it to be quite soothing.' Walton had learned of saloop from the street traders and it was a staple of the lower class diet. However, it was most nice, and it had developed into a habit. 

Turning back to the settee after preparing the drink, he saw Frankenstein standing by the door and pulling on his wet coat. 'You're not leaving? In this weather? And like that - look, you are weeping!' He went over to his guest and gently took his arm.  
'Walton! I am a murderer! I do not know what I was thinking, coming here. It is borrowed time we live on, this politeness!'  
'But you did not mean for it to happen? It was not how you imagined?'  
'No.' Frankenstein felt angry and frustrated, and he meant this to sound firm but it came out with a sob.  
'Then I am sure it is not your fault, not as much as your sorrows have you convinced you. And even so, you poor man - stay the night, I would fear for you out there.'  
'I could have stopped it, I could have prevented it -' tears were streaming down his face. Walton simply put an arm around him and led him back to the settee, unbuttoning his coat as though he were a child, at least, that is how Frankenstein saw it. 

His hands were trembling too much to hold the saucer, and so Walton, seating himself back beside him, held the cup to his lips. He made tentative sips at first, then drank greedily. Walton had one arm behind him, as much to steady himself with the cup as to support Frankenstein. Frankenstein was half leaning on him, his body tense as though unsure whether he should sit up properly or lean in closer, and so Walton pulled him in closer and wrapped the blanket around him, then began to rub comforting circles on his back. 'Thank you' Frankenstein pressed his hand weakly and snuggled into his warmth. It was strange, Walton thought, to be sat before the fire like this with another man, and a near stranger at that, but it was a strange situation that he had been presented to him, and at least he seemed to be offering some comfort. Frankenstein was calm against him, his muscles gradually relaxing as he stared gloomily into the fire, the light of the flames flickering across his countenance. Walton was full of questions, but it would have been careless to put anything to his guest, so they sat in silence. As Walton's hands moved soothingly over the other man's back, he realised how achingly thin he was; his ribs were beyond prominent and his sharp shoulders dug into Walton. He supposed that this was part of the reason why he fell asleep on him, that his body was so depleted, but when he glanced at the clock, Walton saw that they had been sat like that for some hours. He gently lowered Frankenstein onto the settee, tucking the blanket around him. He brushed the soft, dark hair off of his face, and thought how he was incredibly beautiful, for all of the sufferings that his body had sustained. The Coleridge book was opened out on the arm rest and Walton picked it up, smiling a little at the image of the Ancient Mariner. It reminded him of Frankenstein, somehow, although of course, Frankenstein was a young man, and not quite the brown and calloused sailor. No doubt he had an awful tale, though. Walton felt sad then, trying to imagine what this man must have gone through, as he blew out the candles. 

While others may go unquestioningly about their lives, as though acting out a scene from a well-known play, regardless of how miserable they might be they know their role or, at least, they fit into the correct slots and do not stray far from the tree from which they fell, like moulding apples. Walton had no role, and he felt lost, as though he had been tossed into the world to navigate alone, with the blindness of a child. Yet, here was a man who inspired his deepest sympathies, a fellow wanderer, who had crossed the lines that bind ordinary society. Walton knew what it was like to be different and to be afraid; and he knew how harsh others could seem when one was of a delicate disposition; that they are generally too caught up in what they know to be of any help or companionship. Walton swore to himself then, that he would look after Frankenstein, and that he would do anything in his power to alleviate, as much as was possible, the sorrow of this mysterious and broken man.


	2. A Friend

Walton sat at the desk, idly fiddling with his quill pen. Paper was spread before him, on which he had written 'My dearest sister, I believe that I have found a true friend', but no more than that. He considered elaborations, then gave up and crumpled the sheet into a ball and put it aside. He thought about that word, 'friend'. If it could be expanded somehow, another tier added on to it, to encompass something far deeper and glittering, to be all that a lover was said to be and yet not a lover at all, then that was what Frankenstein had become to him. He felt an unspoken understanding between them, and that he had spent his entire life longing for such a friend as he, to such intensity as was described by Aristophanes; although of course, he had no desire for Frankenstein and they both possessed the same genitalia. Yet, this did not prevent his feeling that in this man he had found part of his own soul. He recalled that night they had lain together until it was almost dawn, after a particularly bad dream of Frankenstein's. It had not irked him to be kept from sleep, ministering to the many troubled strains of thought that Frankenstein had suddenly and explosively been unable to hold back from communicating - nay, he had been near raving at the foot of Walton's bed - but instead, as he lay there cradling Frankenstein against his chest, arms wrapped around him protectively and his face buried in the nape of his neck, Walton, for all his hopes that he was able to provide comfort to the other man, felt equally calm and soothed in that closeness with his wonderful and beloved friend.  


When Frankenstein had awoken the morning after their first meeting, Walton's clothing had clung uncomfortably to him, soaked through with sweat. He could feel a faint and unusual warming sensation stir within him, due to the kindness with which he had been received. However, what he supposed might be his conscience awakened some moments later, that voice of reason persuading him, as always, to turn back upon all that had happened; and the familiar blackness crept into his chest. He became aware that Walton was up and looking at him with concern, and this made him want to turn over, repulsed. He supposed that he should say something - that would be the proper thing to do - but he felt weak in the extreme and soon fell into unconsciousness. He was not sure how long he spent in a fever, passing between the states of delirium and semi-wakefulness, but sometimes he believed himself to have been lying there a month and others, that it was still the same day. He could feel a presence beside him and at times thought it to be Henry, so that he reached out toward him; sometimes he could not discern who it was and this frightened him, causing him to cry. Once, he realised that Walton was there feeling his wrist for the pulse, and he desperately tried to pull his arm away so that he would not discover the harsh impressions left there from the shameful final months in Geneva; but he was unable to get any command over his body. His dreams were confusing and he often tried to get up, to flee, but something always forced him back down. It was four days before he groggily came to himself in full.  


'You're awake!' Walton was sat on the floor beside the settee, and Frankenstein gazed at him, trying to fathom his green eyes. After a period of silence, Walton spoke again, softly. 'I called a doctor because you were out for so long. He said that it was a fever of the brain, of sorts, brought on by nerves and bad diet -'  
'The usual, then.'  
'-but you will be okay, I am sure of that. I will make sure of that. You need to eat, that is one of the main things my dear man. I feared for you and did not leave your side.'  
'Oh.'  
'And I am very sorry, but I had to pay him from your pocket for I've no money, although I have written to my family and can return it.'  
'It's fine.' Frankenstein waved his hand, absently.  
'I will fetch some water - and I made a broth, do you feel able to eat?' Frankenstein nodded.  
'There is no meat, so I think that it will be gentle on you.' Walton pressed his hand. Frankenstein looked at it numbly, as though it were a dead thing that he did not care for, but quietly thanked him. When Walton brought over the steaming bowl he moved delicately into a sitting position, and Walton placed it in his lap, explaining 'I purchased some rhubarb, for the doctor recommended it. We can put it in something later. Would you like me to help or can you manage?'  
'I can manage.' Frankenstein took up the spoon. The thought of food and the act of eating made him feel sick, but still he began; albeit slowly and without attention to the taste. He looked at Walton intermittently as he did so, carefully analysing his features. He was ashamed of himself for coming to this man's house, but there was a gentleness to him that he liked immensely. There was something odd and a little vulnerable in his manner, and he had deep and intelligent eyes. 'You stay and rest.' He said, when Frankenstein had finished. 'You are entirely welcome here, and I will look after you until you are recovered.'  
'This is all very kind of you.' Frankenstein got up and walked over to the window. The snow had stopped, and had set lightly on the cobbles outside. 'Thank you, Walton. Quite why you would concern yourself with such a wretch as I, however.' His head was reeling, and he stared blankly into the street. He suddenly feared death, and was conscious of his wasted form and how he had spent the last few years. He was also aware of how sweat-stained and disgusting the shirt that he wore was - that was not even his - and just how far he had fallen from normality. Unable to think clearly, he sat on the floor. Without turning around he could feel Walton's eyes on him, and he began to bristle with a strange, decisive energy.  
'May we take a walk?'  
'It's too cold. We should build the fire and keep beside that.'  
'Your wonderful soup has revived me and I am sure that the air will work upon this accomplishment.'  
'The London air? Hah! This is not Switzerland, you know.' Walton teased, gently. 'I really would rather that you didn't, you need to preserve -'  
'I am used to it. Illness has been the theme of my life, and I am always on my feet as soon as the fever leaves off. It is really not so serious. And as you mention, I am Swiss - it is cold in the mountains.' Frankenstein forced a weak smile.  
Walton did not seem convinced. 'As you wish, although you must borrow my clothing. You have to keep as warm as possible.'  


It was late afternoon by now and the city was beginning to darken, the sky marbled with clouds of navy, as the two men made their way through the streets. The traders were starting to pack up, although a few still called to potential customers that went by; their battered stalls marring the pale winterland, with yellow tracks circling where they had set up. Frankenstein kept a brisk pace, although it was not much faster than Walton's own, and seemed to eye this scene with distrust. When they arrived at the nearest open space, Eden Park, children were playing despite the hour. The waning sun bathed them in a faint, orange glow as they chased each other, scooped up as much snow as they could, and hurled it, breaking into laughter.  
'How horrid it is, that we are all children at some time and cannot remain so.' Frankenstein came out with, as they took themselves across the frosted grass. "Hopes that bud in youthful breasts, live not through the lapse of time". They play, perhaps soldiers, and they dream of adventure, pretend that they are the Greeks, but all that gets lost. They will become cruel and vulgar and hopeless. They turn into their parents, or worse. They forget the dreams that once elevated their little minds. These children will resolve themselves to a life of dullness, and sneer at those who do not!'  
'I've often thought on this, you know.' Walton turned to him. 'I suppose that no child imagines selling shellfish.'  
'How strange, that it should be so dark and cold here, how strange...' Frankenstein muttered oddly, gazing with sadness at the children. 'Yes, and yet, it is a fate common to any. That child with the fairer hair reminds me of my younger brother. I see from your countenance, Walton, that you can tell he met some unhappy fate!'  
'I-' Walton left off, about to say that he had had no thought of such.  
'He died at the hands of that Thing!'  
'I am so sorry-' He broke out, with heart. He berated himself for not finding better words to respond with, but how could he? What a horrible, horrible thing to happen. How could he give a suitable response to that?  
'I am sorry to indulge myself with this. It is long ago now, anyway, and it was a long time that I had not seen him before that.' Frankenstein seemed to be struggling with his breath, and he was shaking but could not tell if it was his nerves again or the cold. 'Have you siblings?'  
'A sister, some years older than myself.' Walton did not fall for the diversion, and still watched his face with a mixture of fear and concern.  
'I know, Walton, that I am a truly vicious person, for what I let happen to my baby brother. Please do not hate me.'  
'I could never hate you.'  
They had reached a bench and Frankenstein sat down, slightly disorientated. The blackness in his chest seemed to be constricting his lungs and pressed heavily upon his stomach. Walton sat beside him, and took both of his gloved hands into his own, running his thumbs over the back of them lightly. Frankenstein was trembling wildly now, and his face had gone pale.  
He explained all that had happened. To William, to Justine. He told Walton of the trial, of Elizabeth's - he called her his sister - attempt to prove Justine's innocence; most painstakingly of all, of his own cowardice. Walton listened and encouraged him gently when he hesitated. By the time that he had finished, the children had left and the place was entirely dark, save for a sliver of moonlight. The gates were about to close, and Walton worried that he should have suggested they leave sooner, because the temperature had reached an unbearable low. 'Let's go home' He murmured, putting an arm around Frankenstein, who leant into him weakly. He tried to comfort him, rubbing his back. 

Once they were back at the room, Walton offered to prepare food but Frankenstein declined and so he wrapped blankets around him, put more coal on the fire, and intended that he should rest for the evening. However, his guest - miraculously - seemed not to desire quietude and instead began to ask questions about Walton's life; where he came from and where his intentions lay; how London appeared to him; as he lay there curled painfully on his side, eyes dull and listless. Despite this, he took in patiently all that Walton said as though it were of the utmost interest to him and gave considered responses, with apparent unawareness of how late the evening grew. The next few days he was feverish and sank in torpor and Walton kept a close eye on him, bringing meals and making sure that he was comfortable and warm; to which he showed a quiet and self-conscious gratitude. He spent the majority of the time snoring softly on the settee as Walton worked at the desk. He explained more of his story, but only after Walton's drawing it out of him for, when he went to remove the untouched plate he noticed Frankenstein's wet eyes and that he was trying to firm his lips together so as to not weep. 'Here - you haven't eaten. How will you regain your strength?' Walton said kindly, sitting with him and then, tentatively 'My friend...' and looking at him with such concern that Frankenstein broke down and, encouraged. started to tell more, this time about his years at Ingolstadt and the first, horrific writhes of the creature, becoming increasingly agitated. Walton spent hours calming him with pleasanter conversation and having him rest on him, Frankenstein feeling a comfort in the touch, in the gentle words. That was the last that he spoke on the creature, but he and Walton fell into a routine of conversation, on all manner of topics. Walton beginning to feel at home in his room and that he for the first time was experiencing something of a connection. Frankenstein was so gentle and possessed of such a fine mind and fine manners that he found himself comfortable enough to tell him about his ambition, opening up into exalted, passionate detail. Frankenstein had looked troubled, but did not tried to dissuade him, instead, he gave advice on what scientific writings might be of the most interest, admitting darkly, however, that 'Nautical endeavour was not my expertise.' Walton doted on him, and loved it most when they discussed literature, for he had never met with anybody so moved by writing. Even for one who professed to have lost everything, there was still the faintest gleam in his eye and the ghost of a smile upon his lips. 'You are really quite the Romantic for a scientist, aren't you?' Walton had said, smiling, showing Frankenstein his first sorry attempts at writing poetry. His health improved although his constitution was still weak, and he returned to his teaching. Walton, to keep his spirits up, decided to visit him on his break with a cup of saloop, and this became custom. The first time, he arrived when Frankenstein was just ending his class, and had been amazed at the beauty of the upper rooms of the library; with the gilded walls that ascended into the high dome and the many shelves of golden-paged books in languages that he could not understand. He observed Frankenstein with his students, and almost smiled at that shy, gentle demeanour that he had become accustomed to, that appeared here so calm and scholarly. He looked like the perfect academic, Walton thought, with his finely made clothing a little old and little loose of his frame, and the spectacles that he, not always, but on occasion required, confessing somewhat sarcastically that the years spent in the dark with the creature had 'ruined my eyes along with everything else'. Yet they were lovely eyes, large in the pale face; soft eyes that gave Walton ease to be with and that broke his heart to see the pain in them. When the students made their exit, he entered, yet Frankenstein hearing a step behind him and sensing a presence turned around violently, shrieking 'Qu'est-ce que tu-' but then, seeing Walton, his frightened look to turned to relief and then embarrassment as he realised that he had spilled saloop on them both.  
'Are you quite alright, my friend? It did not burn you?' Walton looked at him, concerned. And this set him at ease a little. He got out his handkerchief and dabbed gently at Frankenstein's hands and arm where it had spilt. 'No, I-I'm not burned. Are you, Walton?' He asked quietly, and his countenance lit up at the gesture of the other man coming to meet him. 'How considerate of you!'  
Walton smiled at him 'How about we sit outside and drink these?' And so they sat on the front steps of the building, Frankenstein relaxing, feeling a comfort in the drink's diffusive warmth stealing through him as he and Walton watched all of London go by before them.

They continued their nightly talks, growing closer, for Frankenstein seemed to appreciate the company and grew more communicative, finding himself wanting to express to Walton his thoughts more often, and his theories as never before, and Walton, the more trusting, laying his head on Frankenstein's shoulder, luring him into debates on philosophers of the previous century; Schopenhauer being a favourite but falling upon William Godwin at one time.  
'An unconvincing notion! That the world would be perfect if all could think about it. An extremely optimistic view of human nature; man is nothing if not irrational.'  
'What then, make you of his views on marriage?' Walton had had his eyes closed lazily, resting against him, but now opened them in keen anticipation of the response.  
'He is correct on that. It could possibly be a nice gesture but is, most often, as he writes, an affair of property.' His heart raced a little as he spoke, stirred by memory.  
'I agree with you. Did he not marry, though?'  
'The man cannot follow his own beliefs, how does he expect us to? And you see? How imperfect!' And he burst into laughter then, strange, explosive laughter.

And there had been that terrible dream, where Walton had been woken to find a broken and weeping Victor at the foot of his bed. He had taken him into his arms, feeling his hot and wet body trembling against him as he talked him down from the many violent assertions he made about himself, stroking his hair.  
'You are my dearest friend.' He murmured, holding him close.  
'I do not deserve a friend.' He sobbed. 'And you do not know me.' But he wrapped his arms around the other man and held on tightly, as though fearing that he would leave.  
Walton led him into bed and lay down with him. Neither slept for a long time but lay there in silence, Walton feeling his heart ache but also that there was a warmth in his chest when so close to Frankenstein, and that even in ruin, what a friend he had been provided with. How pleasing his company was, despite all he had gone through. What a remarkable man, with a mind as capacious and glittering as the night sky must appear above the mountains of Geneva.


	3. An Invitation

‘Margaret insists that I attend my aunt’s ball,’ Walton announced. He put down the copy of The New Monthly that he had been reading from and turned to Frankenstein, who sat on the settee beside him. ‘You know what, I will go only if you accompany me!’ He grinned, then, considering the situation, added ‘Although I would not that you exert yourself and-’  
‘At a ball?’ Frankenstein sounded confused, if not a little inconvenienced. ‘I would take great pleasure in accompanying you.’  
‘Good!’ Walton paused. ‘Well, I do not much care for these events - all a charade is it not? - but I would so like to see my sister and you must meet! She would love you.’  
Frankenstein smiled. One of his characteristic, distracted smiles. His eyes had frequently that expression which Walton saw now - of distance, bespeaking an unquiet mind. Yet something had changed in his manner of late. Only slightly, but it was noticeable. He seemed calmer, more inclined to laughter; as if friendship and saloop had warmed him through and soothed over his typically cold and morose exterior. Of course, the air of disconsolate never forsook his features, even in happier moments, but Walton supposed that his past had robbed him. Either that or it was the kind of person that he had always been, and all after Ingolstadt had simply been the ‘fate’, as his friend offtimes called it, of one so restless and strange. It should not be forgotten that Victor had taken it upon himself to play God, Walton thought - and smiled. 

‘I would like to see where you grew up. I wonder if it is as I picture,’ he put a hand on Walton’s arm then. An usual gesture by his standards, but one perhaps that came from his increase in trust. He felt obliged to Walton for his attentiveness - and that he should do as his friend would like - but also intrigued by the suggestion of a ball. His memories were often distorted (he had no trouble admitting that), but he had a bitterly poignant nostalgia for the days of his youth. He had always been a quiet boy, lingering on the outskirts of a room with a wish to be elsewhere, but he could recall those dances and those dinners; the polite company that took pride in themselves and their manners. It was a world of spacious, well-lit rooms; of cleanliness and regime and unquestioned innocence. Perhaps, he considered, all this was what it was to be sane. He’d been wandering towns and villages at night like a shadow, collapsing onto his bed in feverish states and perfect solitude. Fearing that he would soon lose his mind entirely. He was still not certain that he was fit for company, but he had Walton now. 

On the journey to Oxfordshire, Frankenstein gazed out of the window. The morning was raw and chill, with mist bands over the furrows and low hills looming grey in the distance. Yet he watched the scene with something bordering contentedness. The damp English countryside did not inspire the same feelings as Geneva but there was something heartier about this land. It was earthier, smaller somehow; antiquated and so different to a child of the alpine climes. There was even a faint passion surging through him, looking out across the fields. The country of the poets that he had read! Walton was beside him and he felt him lay his head on his shoulder, which made him smile and he leant into him. 

By late evening they had arrived in Marlow, where they were to stop for the night. They dined in a large room behind the bar with the landlady, a widow named Mrs Peters. It must be a depressing and lacklustre existence, Frankenstein had thought, to be the owner and operator of such a place with all of its banal responsibilities; but Mrs Peters was genial and he could feel himself lightening and wanting to engage. She served up beef pie with copious gravy and potatoes, which was very ‘English’ and fitting for the place itself with its low, Tudor oak beams and white-washed walls. Candles flickered across an ancient and gnarled table where they sat with another lodger and Mrs Peter’s daughter. 

They were soon interrupted by the maid bursting in with a rush of cold night air.  
‘There is a gypsy outside,’ she said, looking flustered.  
‘Well, send it away!’  
‘She won’t go.’ And a woman appeared in the doorframe; small and sodden from the weather.  
‘She wants to tell fortunes,’ the maid explained helplessly.  
‘Not another one.’ Wearily, Mrs Peters turned to Walton and Frankenstein. ‘Do you wish to hear your fortunes? It is some entertainment, I suppose, for you city folk.’  
‘I cannot seem what harm it would do, bring her in!’ Cried the lodger.  
‘I have heard much about their secrets.’ Frankenstein looked at the woman with undisguised wonder. His childish fascination for the mysteries had never truly gone away, despite how years and cares had worn at his spirit. He felt much older than his six-and-twenty years. He had never had much of an appetite and so moved some of his food onto the empty plate beside him, gently pushing it towards the “gypsy” as she sat down. ‘Here.’  
She shook her head, turning her black gaze on him. Then, in a sudden movement, she gripped his wrist and pulled it across the table. Turning over his hand - so thin and white compared to her own that gave the impression of worn leather - she appeared to examine it. He stared back, never breaking eye contact, but wincing a little at the strength in which she held him.  
‘You watch what you do!’ Mrs Peters barked in impatience, moving away a candle that threatened to burn his arm.  
‘Do not leave this man alone,’ the old woman spoke, glancing to Walton and Mrs Peters. ‘A dangerous man. And yet, dangerous to who? Sulphurous and thought-executing fires. Burning! Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts. Do not leave him alone.’  
‘You are telling no fortune with this.’ Frankenstein pulled his hand away, heart beating thick.  
‘The very serpent's chalice! I’ve an image before me. A golden child and a cruel blow. The cavemen singing but they do not know.’  
‘You are no Grecian sibyl - you speak confusingly in imitation!’ Frankenstein snapped.  
‘Satan hates you but is loathe to lose you. Contorted in his wrath, on fields of death and decay. And a fine proud magistrate there once was!’  
‘I will not have you insult the gentleman!’ Mrs Peters cried, standing up. ‘I’ve heard all this before!’  
‘And what would you have me say of you?’ The gypsy ignored her and turned to Walton. The lodger was giggling. ‘A pretty thing I could say.’  
‘Then do so.’  
‘Do you know? Then condemn me!’ Frankenstein was shaking wildly, leaning across the table to her but the old woman paid no attention.  
'First.' She held out her hand to Walton, beckoning for money. He would have given it to her as well, had not Mrs Peters grabbed her,  shrieking 'Look how you disturb my guests, I have heard all of your nonsense before! Cavemen and Devils and lord knows who and their mother! Look how you have insulted him! Get out, out!' And she forced the gypsy out of her seat and out of the room, into the night, bolting the door behind her. 'Pay no mind to that creature, they are always at it. I've no time for them, frightening my guests into parting with their money.' She lay a hand on Frankenstein's shoulder making him flinch. He could feel the sweat dripping inside his clothes. 'Here, take some wine. You look rather pale.'  
Mrs Peters and Walton were watching him carefully. Walton was unnerved himself, having felt the gnarled hand on his back as the old woman were speaking. Surely, he could not be mistaken at the shape she had drawn there.  
'Pale?' Frankenstein asked, agitated.  
'Just a little sickly, dear.'  
'I suppose I always am.' He responded.

Once everybody had retired, Walton and Frankenstein sat in the adjoining room in front of the fire. Frankenstein was fatigued, but the light and heat was soothing and so was Walton.  
'You don't have to be alone tonight, if you do not want to be.' Walton said, softly.  
'I will be okay.' There was that look in his eyes again, and a resigned sadness that Walton knew all too well.  
'I wonder if the ball will be too much. The dances are lively and, if it should be, you can let me know.' Walton was looking at him with tenderness.  
'Worry not.' Frankenstein gave a small smile. 'Are you okay, Walton? You seem unhappy?' He had noticed a tinge of melancholy in their earlier conversation, that gave the impression that it had been a little forced.  
Walton sighed. 'I just have not been home in a while.' Frankenstein looked at him in sympathy. 'I think that I will retire now.'  
'I am so happy, being here with you. Things are not so bad as they seem. And "Nought may endure but mutability", your favourite poet! And he is correct.' Frankenstein smiled again, and got up to embrace him.  
Walton held him for a long moment against his chest. His friend was only slightly shorter than himself and Walton was well above the average height. He could feel all of Frankenstein's bones pressing into him, he was frighteningly thin, poor Victor. He rested his head against Victor's soft, dark hair, and something stirred in him which he tried to ignore. 'Good-night, my dear.' He whispered, with his arms wrapped tightly around him, giving him one last, heartfelt squeeze before exiting the room. Frankenstein watched him, suddenly feeling very alone.  
He then heard the patter of footsteps and Mary, Mrs Peters' daughter, materialised.  
'You gentlemen must lead interesting lives.'  
'In some ways, I suppose.'  
She sat on the settee opposite him in her nightdress, plain and yet with kind eyes.  
'Where are you from, Mr Frankenstein?'  
'Geneva. Although I grew up slightly outside of the town, in the hills.'  
'Ah. Then that is interesting, and that is the smallest fact. I grew up here, and I shall die here.'  
'Not necessarily. Perhaps you will meet someone, or leave to do something of note.'  
'Meet someone here?' She sighed, hopelessly, looking at him. 'I desire life, and feeling. As a child I read those romances, it is a pity that strangers are not lurking to take me.'  
'I would not count yourself too unlucky. Why not write them?'  
'Maybe.' She gave a girlish smile.  
'My life is not interesting. When I was young, I swore that it would be, but dreams do not correspond to reality. I met only with anguish.'  
'When you were young? You cannot be old now.'  
'Perhaps I feel as though I were.'  
'You surprise me, Mr Frankenstein.'  
'Imagination is far superior. Reality is a miserable affair, and to be restless as you claim to be I am sure that you have a fine imagination.'  
'You speak as a man, and you men have all the world at your feet. You do not understand what it is to be a woman.' She said, softly.  
'There are women, you know, who have done unexpected things. There is a writer by the same name as you, who has travelled all Europe - ran away with a poet. And another Mary, who spent time in France, during the revolution, and this one alone. I suppose there is a great price to pay for living 'interesting' as you call it, whether you are man or woman. These were unhappy women. But just as there are unhappy men, that go against what was laid out for them. Perhaps it is better to keep safe, although that too, proves itself to be miserable.' He said, gently. 'If only the dreams of childhood remained as they were, untainted by reality. But I do not think yours will be a snake to bite you as mine have been. Yours are nice enough. Do not give up hoping.'  
'I wish that I could go with you, tomorrow.' Her eyes sparkled - they had been throughout dinner - and she looked at him with such longing. She took his thin hands, gently, as though they were precious, and held them to her lips. 'Be safe, Mr Frankenstein.' And she left him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- by gypsy I do not mean Romani. It is simply an old peasant woman, of no particular background, who would wander around England. These were commonly called gypsies, or travellers.


	4. A Returning

Morning brought with it the mists over the moorland, gleaming through the old and dirtied window pane and glittering off the frost that had settled there overnight. At a distance one could hear the sheep that appear to wander freely about these parts of the countryside. 

Frankenstein stood in front of the hallway mirror with cold hands, tying his cravat. He had never been very good at it but he supposed that it looked adequate; having with some concentration looped the white linen into a barrel knot. He had never believed himself to be a handsome man, especially not of late with how he had neglected his appearance; but as he watched his pale yet dark-lashed eyes staring back at him in the glass, he would have said that he was almost. Properly clothed, his thinness even seemed aristocratic. 

It was dark by the time they arrived in Oxfordshire, with candlelight illuminating the broad front of Ardington Manor. The wheels pulling up onto gravel drew the two friends from playful conversation, but when a servant led them inside Frankenstein almost faltered in the hallway. He felt somewhat exposed, now that laughter, and the sound of voices, were distinct behind the large doors at the opposite end. 

A woman came darting down the staircase and Walton’s posture seemed to draw itself upward.  

‘Why did you not write?’ Was the first thing out of her mouth, and yet she was smiling. ‘Evidently you received the money, to have arrived here and not to have starved - but you never write! Only in the last moment do we know to expect you!’ She rebuked, kissing him. ‘Are you not going to introduce the gentleman, then?’ Now looking Frankenstein up and down as though affronted.  
‘Victor Frankenstein. My very good friend. And this is Margaret, my sister,’ Walton said brusquely, as if hastening to get it out of the way. There was something in Margaret’s features to suggest she were suspicious of him, Frankenstein thought. Her countenance was harder and a lot less emotive than his friend’s, and she was not as he had pictured her from the, perhaps sentimental, description. He could not imagine her as his own childhood playmate, that was certain. As they followed Walton toward the room in which the evening was to take place, he could not shake the uncomfortable feeling of being watched. 

For the first hour, nerves rendered him unable to move from Walton’s side. They were approached by an older couple who were introduced as Mr and Mrs Ashley, and the former beamed when it was explained that he came from Switzerland.  
‘Guten Abend! Wie lange bist Sie in Großbritannien, Herr Frankenstein?’  
‘Ein paar Monate. Ich Komme aus dem Kanton Genève,’ he replied in perfect German, yet with an emphasis on the French accent in his hometown.  
‘I see. And how are you finding London?’ Mr Ashley quickly returned to English.  
‘Very agreeable.’  
‘So you have just arrived here. I trust that you have no yet had the pleasure of Mr and Mrs Chatsworth? Walton’s aunt and uncle. They are very respectable people.’ He cast an eye over Walton as he said so, which did not go unnoticed. 

The more that they spoke, Frankenstein was aware that Walton seemed to mimic his own culled formality; whereas he had by now grown used to his exuberant attention to detail. Led into discussion of the - quite German - surname that he was in possession of, he admitted that it was ‘a mystery’ due to his family being for many generations counsellors and syndics in the republic. ‘But Victor itself is a typical French name.’  
‘I have known men of those courts, and I wonder now, perhaps I have met your father!’  
‘I’m afraid that I cannot confirm the possibility, my father being dead!’ He smiled. Then his heart dropped. What a way to say so! Talk about absent-minded. How ill-mannered, how abnormal! He might have imagined it, but the conversation seemed to take a cold turn after that, as though Mr Ashley had little more to say to such a maniac. Excusing himself, Frankenstein left with Walton; who was making his way through the room. 

Walton paid him hardly any attention, in that first hour or two. He was introduced by him to a few more of the guests, but he kept wandering about, disappearing into the crowd every moment, as though trying to lose himself among them. 

When the dance was called, Frankenstein quietly asked the young Miss Ashley if she would ‘give him the honour,’ to which she agreed somewhat reticently. She had been sat gossiping with a rather less attractive friend who scowled up at him, apparently displeased by the interruption. 

They moved energetically down the room with the other pairs, but when Miss Ashley spoke it was to remark, with a curl of the lip, ‘You move stiffly, Mr Frankenstein. Unused to dancing?’  
‘Out of the habit, it could be said.’  
‘It could.’ She turned about him. ‘But as a Frenchman, surely you have taken lessons?’  
‘I am Swiss. But yes, I have. Many years ago.’  
‘Oh, good. Mama would not have me dance with a Frenchman,’ she joked.  
‘Mine neither,’ Frankenstein deadpanned.  
‘ _Et regardless._ Your dances are not like ours? On the continent?’ She smiled. A sharp-toothed kind of smile that made it unclear if this were mockery or a sort of flirtation. So he merely stared at her a moment.  
‘You Waltz, no?’  
‘Ah, yes! We do. It is quite common in Geneva. I hear that it’s classed “indecent” in England?’  
‘I should say so. I myself should quite like to attempt it. Though don’t worry yourself - we shall not, I am certain, be doing that. Least of all because of this lot,’ she angled her head toward the musicians in the far corner.  
‘You don’t like them?’ Frankenstein smiled.  
‘Do you?’  
‘I cannot rightly say, I have never been fond of music.’  
‘Then I wonder, being not fond of music, what on earth you are doing at a ball.’ 

At last they bowed and parted. Chest weak from fever and malnourishment, he hoped that it was not seen how he required a moment to lean against the wall and catch his breath. He observed the room from that distance. 

For the second dance he had nobody; and so he tried to move into conversation with Mr Wickham; engaged with two other men beside the statues. No one acknowledged him, save for a brief, disinterested glance over, and they continued on their topic (something about a ‘mushroom’, whatever was meant by that) and then walked away to the drinks table as though he had not been there at all. Alors! He snorted, not bothering to follow them. Not a little stranded, however, he sought Walton and was instead accosted by Mr Birch and his friend Bewick.

‘I hear that you’ve a friend with you; that French man.’ Mrs Chatsworth proclaimed when she and Walton caught up at long last.  
‘On the contrary - he is Genevese, my dear aunt.’  
‘He is certainly a sight. Where do you find such people!’  
‘He has been unwell, although making a fine convalescence. He stayed at my rooms.’  
‘What does he do, then?’  
‘He is a professor,’ Walton lied.  
‘And he just had Miss Ashley for the dance!’ Mrs Chatsworth looked around the room, apparently in search of the happy couple. ‘Has he a wife? If not, I must say he looks in need of one. Like death warmed up, Walton.’  
‘No, he hasn't a wife.’ Jealousy twisted his insides. ‘And he doesn’t need one,’ he muttered under his breath, trying to locate his friend among the crowd. He suddenly felt quite ill himself.  
‘I beg your pardon?’  
‘Nothing.’  
‘Not many single men in this room, you know. Miss Sutton went to London already, although I’ve no doubt you have been informed of it She thought it best to await the season, and her father has some old friends down there.’  
‘That is nice for her, I am sure.’ He grimaced as his aunt began to fiddle with the lapels of his coat. 

‘My brother died at Trafalgar,’ Bewick exclaimed, raising his chin.  
‘Did he?’ Frankenstein met his gaze lackadaisically.  
‘Yes.’  
‘I am not French, you know.’  
Dear God. He had little in common with this men and yet it was that he should try to maintain decent enough conversation. He even felt that they were mocking him, subtly; all disregarded points and coldly raised eyebrows - evidently, they found him quite peculiar. He was no great wit nor was he some middling country gentleman, and so he patiently bore them out the best he could in the way that he knew how; quiet eloquence. And without bothering to disguise a mild irritation. Yet when he finally was able to be near Walton, his one comfort, he found himself dispirited. 

Walton had realised that he felt uncomfortable around Frankenstein. More so, that he struggled to keep an aspect of naturalness to his conduct. When he saw him coming over he had to look away, cheeks burning, and find something else to look upon. Anything else but him. He caught the eyes of others and a fury rushed his breast when he hoped that they did not pick up on his discomposure. When Victor spoke, Walton swallowed nervously and admired his own feet, eventually wandering away mid-conversation. It was all too much. He was very angry at these conflicted emotions. 

He began talking with an old neighbour called Frederick Walpole. They did not have a lot in common save for knowing some of the same people, but it was at least a welcome respite from the situation in London.  
‘He keeps looking at you,’ Walpole broke off suddenly, gesturing vaguely to his left. Walton followed his hand intently, with bile rising in his chest.  
‘Yes, he’s my friend.’  
‘Then you must be exceptionally close with this friend - because you keep looking over at him, too!’ He turned to his cousin. ‘Shall we play at Whist, Boris?’  
Walton scowled. He thought that he saw laughter in Boris’ eyes. It may well have been there anyway, but he did not like it one bit.  
In great consternation, he strode toward a servant with a tray of champagne. ‘Let me have one.’ Reaching for the glass, he felt a hand lay atop his.  
‘Sorry,’ Frankenstein quickly pulled it away and took a different one.  
‘Watch it,’ Walton hissed, turning his back. 

The melting point was a name sounded in the crowd. Walton’s own, on the lips of family friend Mrs Saville.  
‘I do not wonder what he gets up to in London, that boy.’  
‘He is four-and-twenty now, I hardly think him a boy.’  
‘Yes, yes. But he’s immature and I have known him well since boyhood. Still that sullen child!’  
‘Who is the man with him? He won’t leave him alone! It’s as though they are in double-harness. And when I did speak to Robert he could hardly look me in the eye. It’s London, it is. Still, it is nice that he has a friend. You know how he has struggled in the past.’ 

They lowered their voices and Walton had to strain to hear them. Not much could be understood at all, but he distinctly heard  
‘Might suppose he frequents the molly house.’  
‘Do you know what that is?’  
‘Oh! Don’t say it!’  
‘Well his behaviour is rather odd, especially regarding the whole marriage debacle,’ Mrs Saville cackled.  
Walton never questioned that they might not have been referring to him. Yet old ladies, after all, like to gossip about everyone. 

He started to feel incredibly sick as though he must sit down. His heart was going to explode, he knew it, the rate that it was rattling. His head was going to explode. Foggily, he marched across the tiles without knowing quite where he was headed. He wanted his old room, he wanted to go to bed.  
‘Walton!’ Instinctively he turned and, just as he did so, collided face-first with Victor Frankenstein. He felt his entire countenance turning crimson. 

Worse. 

Pulling back, Frankenstein lay a horribly clammy hand on his arm as though to steady himself. 

The entire room gawped. (Or if they did not, Walton certainly imagined that they did.) 

‘Walton,’ Frankenstein said softly. 

Walton wrenched his arm free. ‘Come outside with me now.’ 

Walton checked that it was just the two of them in the hallway before he hissed ‘Speak with my family, speak with my friends. But do not clap about my heels like some diseased hound.’ He was shaking and did not know if this was from fear or anger. He still felt a hotness in his chest at the words ‘molly house’ and  kept mulling it over in his mind. Impossible. Absent-mindedly, he began to play with the ends of Frankenstein’s cravat, winding it around his fingers. Frankenstein stiffened, and did not take his eyes off him. He watched Walton unhappily.  
‘Your heart is racing.’ Walton leaned in.  
And yet his own pounded violently at the pace of a gallop. He leant in closer, so that his lips were a millimetre from his friend’s. They could brush, he could kiss him. It frightened him more than anything in the world, in that moment.  
‘Stay away from me! I detest you!’ He snarled, suddenly thrusting the man away from him. ‘You are an embarrassment!’ The hurt look on Victor’s face wound him up more, as though he, Walton, were the guilty one! And so he struck him hard across it and fled, back up long hall in the direction of the lights and music.  
Frankenstein, shocked, stumbled back into the shadows, shaking a lot. He tried to compose himself. ‘What did I do?’ He whispered. 

At dinner, talk, for the most part, revolved around business for those who dealt in it, and some tale regarding the clergyman’s marriage. Walton was irritable. He could not keep his feet still beneath the table and kept offering up comments when they were unneeded, seeming more than a little on edge. Nobody listened to him, and it were largely as though he were not there save for, on at least one occasion, Margaret cautioning him with ‘Yes, alright, now lower your voice, you are not on the stage.’ His aunt sat with her lips pressed together in an amused line, but did not say anything. That nobody would follow him into conversation appeared to aggravate him all the more.  
‘You are not eating much.’ He turned his head to look at Frankenstein’s plate. Frankenstein had his knife and fork in hand, slowly cutting the meat.  
‘Mind your manners.’ Mrs Chatsworth shot him a severe look.  
‘But he never eats! Look at him, he is behind everybody else. Soon the tables will be cleared for pudding! It is ridiculous. And you know, he is only interested in sweet things anyway, and then only rarely! Would you believe! He left some of a pie that I made to rot away - left it in his pocket, of what was actually my coat, and I did not know about it for some time!’ Frankenstein flinched and his face coloured. He did not look up.  
‘Is it any wonder, if he must listen to you?’  
‘How is London, Walton?’ Lady Birch changed the subject.  
‘Marvellous. I’m in the library all the time, where I read scientific literature. For you see, I have this plan. I am going to discover the North-West passage - do you know of it?’ Her face went blank.  
‘It has been sought for centuries, but nobody has managed to reach it. Possibly the trader, Octavius…’  
‘You always were so clever.’ She interrupted.  
‘It lay there for over ten years, froze in the ice. And the crew had all died!’ Realising he had lost her attention he broke off. ‘I will succeed! And yet I am far behind others, not versed in any field. I am playing catch-up and it is a dispiriting game. There are so many books that I do not have the understanding for, and yet my friend, Frankenstein, can read anything that he desires. It’s such a contrast! He attended Ingolstadt and knows things that you could not imagine.’  
‘Do not start this again,’ Mrs Chatsworth warned tersely.  
‘I do not think university important,’ Frankenstein said quietly, looking down at his plate.  
‘Yes, well, when one is already fluent in five languages, and all of the mathematical complexities, one may wonder why anybody needs university! But I, I am more illiterate than many boys aged ten.’ University is not important indeed, with all the ornaments of what might be an Eton education! And then, not everybody in this world goes off their subject like a stung child.’ He ceased his feverish rant and the table fell silent. Frankenstein’s knife screeched across his plate and almost cracked it.  
‘Oh Walton dear, our universities turn out more drinkers than they do scholars.’ Said Mr Birch, half drunk.  
‘I can no longer stomach these scientific things, that is true. I was obsessive and it took everything from me. But I did not learn at the university - and this you should recall! I did it alone, I told you. I know Latin and English and heaven knows what else was made available, yes, but so did my brother and my sister and my friend, and if they had lived you should have tried holding a conversation with them! Not to sound self-aggrandising, but you miss the point otherwise! You cannot learn without the lust, and that was mine! Forget the university!’ He stared shiveringly at Mrs Chatsworth. ‘Walton is very intelligent and he has that lust. But who can say what comes of the man who sustains it?’ He still felt the blow that had been struck, and bitter tears almost came to his eyes. . Pathetic Victor, always crying, He scolded himself. Turning back to Walton he snapped, ‘I found formal study too regimented. If I had stuck to it, we would never have met!’ It sounded as though he wished that they had not. 

People began to leave as the night drew to a close. Holding a small lantern, Frankenstein slid open the door to the guest room that he had been allocated. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and stared. The tears that he had been holding back all evening threatened to spill. Ripping off the cravat, he threw it to the ground. In a stronger frame of mind he might have been able to see the situation for what it was, for a man only finds in the world what he carries in his heart, but but as it was he believed everybody to have felt the same revulsion toward him, knowing as well as he did that he was out of place there. That ever, he would be out of place in the haunts of others. In bed he pulled his knees up to his chest, shivering. The cold was near unbearable; the mattress uncomfortable due to the prominence of his bones. He hated the feel of the food in his stomach. And he missed the reassuring heat and softness of Walton, but even he had grown sick of him. Anybody might. Any sane person. Walton’s hands...had gently soothed over his chest when his lungs were bad, had kindly slid a soft blanket underneath him when his ribs ached from lying down. Well, that was another friend gone. And hadn’t he deserved it?  He was fucking pathetic, weird, disgusting. He tried to distract his mind from these melancholy reflections but it was of no use and a horrible anxiety seized upon him. His pulse throbbed in every limb and he struggled for breath. He would calm himself, it would be okay, he would sleep. The nervousness was like a hot liquid dripping through his chest cavity, but it was nothing unusual, nothing that could not be dealt with. He was not certain at what time sleep came. And when it did it was not for long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- The waltz is a European dance, and until the 1820s it was considered too saucy for England. That's not to say that it didn't happen. But Miss Ashley is not exactly taken with poor Victor. The thought probably horrifies her. (it was actually not that saucy at all, dear lord, but you know how things were back in the day).
> 
> \- A 'molly house' is the Georgian equivalent of the gay bar. Can also be a brothel. Common in London. 
> 
> \- Whist is an English card game. Very popular during the regency.
> 
> \- Trafalgar. A battle between English, French, and Spanish fleets. Won by England, but not without cost. 
> 
> \- Mr Ashley asks Victor how long has he been in Britain? Victor replies, a couple of months.


	5. A Reconciliation

Walton woke up far too early. It were as though sleep had not worn out of him, and he would have fallen back into dreaming if not for the cacophony of voices and footsteps outside his bedroom door. Still, he lay for some moments beneath the sheets. He felt absolutely terrible. It seemed impossible to draw together energy enough to force himself upward and out of their protective veil. 

When at last he did make it into the hallway, his family were standing at the top of the staircase in a hushed circle. Mr Birch sat looking overwrought on an ottoman. Whatever the matter was, Mrs Chatsworth had at least managed to powder her face. She bore a strange paroxysm of grief beneath the plaster and rouge. 

‘Lady Birch has been murdered!’ 

‘Oh…’ Walton stared at her blanky, unsure what he should say. Turning to a servant, his aunt asked for water. Mr Birch was still feeling the effects of the night before. 

A sort of sickness rose in Walton’s throat as he continued down the corridor in a haze, directly to his friend’s door. He knocked, but not before hesitating. No answer. He knocked again, and louder, but there was still no response. Turning the handle - and surprised to find the door unlocked - he let himself into an empty room. 

The sheets were crumpled where his friend had lay, and his clothes were strewn upon the floor, but an ice-cold tremor passed through Walton’s breast. Catching sight of himself in the mirror, he cursed. ‘You arsehole.’ 

‘What are you doing?’ Margaret asked, standing in the door frame. He walked by her without a reply; similarly taking no notice of Mr Birch, who was now crying, as he made his way downstairs. 

The servants looked up at him silently, bent over tables preparing breakfast or drifting between the walls like blue-gowned ghosts. Walton began to search every room for Frankenstein, his sense of panic increasing by the minute. Colour had completely drained from his face by the time he, approaching the back of the manor, remembered in a faint excitement that there was one place entirely cut off from the rest - or so it seemed. Frankenstein may have sought somewhere to hide. If not from the noise (which evidently had been carrying on quite some, and was bloody dreadful) then from Walton himself. Although, what if he had simply left? Gone completely. Left him. The thought was almost too awful to countenance.

The room was dusty, and redolent of age, when Walton creaked open its heavy, oak door and peered into the dim light. He sighed with relief. Sat there, back facing him, on the familiar old fur rug, was his friend’s slight figure. He was so fragile, shivering there with his prominent spine poking out through the thin cotton shirt, Walton thought, swallowing uncomfortably.   
‘You don’t have to sit on the floor, you know,’ he began hoarsely, then taking a couple of steps, laying a hand on Frankenstein’s shoulder. As expected, he flinched. ‘I’m sorry.’ He started again, I-am so sorry. About everything-’   
‘Listen,’ Frankenstein interrupted, without looking up.   
‘Lady Birch died last night. I mean, was murdered. Strangled. Apparently. Although I imagine that you have heard all of the-’  
‘I know.’ Frankenstein was so quiet that if there had been a fire his words would have been lost entirely. He lifted his gaze, and his eyes were sleepless and pained.   
‘I never liked her.’ Walton stated, simply. ‘But none of that matters, anyway. I am not sure why it should be the first thing I mention, dear God, I-’   
‘I know who did it. He would continue this! He wants me severed!’   
‘Frankenstein-’   
‘It was that thing, Walton. That thing I made, I saw him last night!’   
CAK CAK CAK. 

A squawking erupted outside the window. Frankenstein cut off, stiffened with fright. 

‘It’s just the ducks,’ Walton said, softly.   
‘Ducks?’ He breathed out, shaking. ‘Ducks…’   
‘Yes, just ducks.’   
‘Well. It was on the staircase. At first I believed myself to be imagining things, for you know how it can be, at night and in such half-waking states, but there it was. Its hideous face. I almost died on the spot.’   
‘We have to let them know.’   
‘Don’t be a fool!’   
‘Fool? They will not say a word but I know they imply it. I fear her husband will take the blame! It was not the happiest marriage. He’s upstairs now, drunk.’   
‘They’ll think us mad.’   
‘And let it get away again?’   
‘No!’ Frankenstein began to get agitated. ‘Don’t you understand? Did you not listen to me? I swear they’ll put you up in Hoxton! They will call us mad. Madder than anything crawling the floor of your Bedlam. You cannot expect them to believe you! That there is, wandering through Oxfordshire, an eight-foot veritable MONSTER that I made? Are you out of your mind? Are you quite well, Walton?’ He got up and started back into the corner of the room, looking at him nervously.   
‘Frankenstein.’   
‘Do you know what they would do, if they heard you seriously try to claim that? They would put you away.’   
He pulled up his sleeve,  revealing a thin wrist that he held before his friend. The pale flesh was encircled by purplish scarring, the sort that might ordinarily be found on a prisoner. ‘They called me mad. They chained me up and put me in a cell.’ Tears began to drip pitifully down his hollow cheeks, and he wiped them away.   
‘Dear God.’ Walton stared. ‘Frankenstein….Victor, you poor thing.’ A multitude of emotions strove for dominance within his breast. ‘Come here, my poor friend.’ He lifted his arms and wrapped them tightly around Frankenstein. ‘How could anybody do that to you.’ He began to stroke his back, still cradling him close and Frankenstein sobbed heavily. ‘I’ve got you, and I’ll keep you safe. Shh. Come on, my dear, let’s sit down.’   
‘I’m sorry.’   
‘It’s okay, my lovely friend.’ 

Walton wrapped a moth-eaten old  blanket around him and stroked his hair and back, sitting on the floor against the settee.   
He calmed a little, although his eyes were red and he could not stop sniffing. Walton insisted that he must eat, and so they had breakfast together.   
Frankenstein picked up a bread roll and dipped it in a mug of warm chocolate, which was not the custom but Walton copied him, supposing that it would taste nice. He only took a couple of bites. ‘My stomach hurts.’   
Walton did not force him to take more. He stared into space as he finished his food, with barely an appetite himself, the sensation of an immense guilt weighing upon him. ‘I didn’t mean a word I said yesterday.’ He said, without making eye contact.  
‘We’re all imperfect.’ Frankenstein replied, quietly. He looked at Walton and then, hesitating slightly, began to stroke his friend’s hair.  
‘Doesn’t excuse what I did.’ Tears welled up and he hoped that they would not spill. ‘I cannot stand that you hurt, and then to make you hurt - myself to do it? That is evil.’  
‘You make it something it’s not.’ Frankenstein continued his caresses and Walton lay his head on his shoulder, breathing in his comforting scent.

All in that room remained as it was when it had been in use, and so it required no effort for Walton to locate coal or matches. Should anybody have decided to enter, they would have found him and Frankenstein laying together on the rug. The room had belonged to Walton’s grandfather, an odd man who had meant something once; what it quite was Walton could not easily call to mind. He was the cornerstone of childhood, and safety in a way, Walton thought. He used to take him out into the fields and play with him, read him tales of adventure in the Far East and yet. For all of his going on about childhood, for all of his nostalgia, he was not entirely sure why it need be - for what had been of importance? The feeling prevailed,  - and only grew with the years - of being entirely lost in the world. As though he were on a ship with no compass and the stars kept fading from view. Now the fire was ablaze once more and not for a ghost of his past but for Victor.   
Frankenstein gave a low moan of pleasure as Walton's hands moved between his shoulders, soothing some of the tension out of them. His body seemed to soften. Yet when Walton stroked over his ribs and then across his stomach, he squirmed away from him.  
‘Did I hurt you?’  
‘No, I -’  
‘Wait. Are you ticklish?’ Frankenstein did not answer and so Walton ran his hands lightly over his side again and he writhed. ‘You are!’  
‘What are you doing?’  
‘Tickling you.’  
‘Why?’  
‘Have you not been tickled before?’ Walton tickled him again.  
‘I don’t know the word. Perhaps?’  
‘What is it in French?’  
‘Chatouiller? I don’t know.’ Frankenstein grinned.  
Walton embraced his bony form, burying his face in his hair and nuzzling into him, his hands coming to rest gently against Frankenstein's stomach. ‘You make me feel loved.’ Frankenstein said, breathing out and hoping that the nervousness would leave.  
‘You are loved.’ Walton murmured holding him tight, lips against his neck.  
It was in the Symposium that Aristophanes was said to have claimed that Zeus split humans in half. They had initially been hermaphrodites, formed of two faces, four arms, four legs and two sets of genitalia. A soulmate was who you had been separated from, and one might spend a lifetime in search of them. It was lesser acknowledged that some of these creatures had been entirely one sex - that they had had two sets of the same genitals. Some were two females attached, and some were two males. Walton had been tearing himself up inside thinking about it - as he was wont to do, such is the price of introspection - and now he concluded, with relative ease, that he must have been one of those that had been entirely male. ‘Look to the arts’, he laughed inwardly, ‘and you will find that you are not the only one, people have felt all sorts of things throughout their lives’. He knew that he loved Victor more than anyone or anything in the world. And if the Greeks could admit it, then so could he.


	6. A National Gallery

It was the greatest city in the world. Fog draped itself above the interminable streets gossamer as a bridal veil, curling over the districts of trade, where the artisans and the labourers and the bohemians made their home. It was the rattle of wheels, the clatter of hooves, and the shouting and harassment of the vendors; all jostling in that veritable sea of human existence, trying to make a living. ‘You’ve got to work hard to find the beauty, but it’s there.’ A young cab driver had informed Walton with a friendly yet damaged smile, when he first alighted to the grimy cobblestones of Aldgate. In certain moments he was intensely grateful to call London his home. It seemed pregnant with possibility, the vast multitudes seemed to await him, great men liaised behind walls down every avenue and now that it was winter the white snow coated the dirt and stench of summers passed, and the streets were filled with the welcoming scent of burning wood and coal. At times it was possible to steal a quiet moment and he would go to the river, where the splendid dome of St Paul’s opened itself to the sky - and in those days you could still see the stars. The spirit of the past seemed to ripple across the waters of the Thames, and rather than the Lethe it was a river of remembrance, where you felt on looking at it that you could drink in its wisdom. It had served Britain for centuries, for millennia, for all time; the ships were bound to glittering destinations beyond its Isles - bound to history, to eternity - and the world lay before any man who sailed out on her tide. It was also easier for Walton to appreciate the little things now, with his first and dearest friend.

They took the embankment near Blackfriars, contemplating the ships that drifted in and out sails a flutter in the light breeze, a great cluster of canvas. There was a terrible amount of shouting that accompanied the unloading of crates, overseen by a very stout man with a purple complexion and red grizzle for a beard. His men wore grubby, damp attire and had the hard faces that characterise that class; suitably so, for it was rough work.  
‘The state of him.’ Walton grimaced as he watched them. ‘What a life.’  
Frankenstein looked at him carefully and murmured, ‘Your men will be of a far more agreeable temperament, like your own. You’ll find them, Walton. This is a trading vessel and yours is a discovery expedition.’  
‘Yet I must gain some experience. And we would require a crew fit for the territory, regardless of high-mindedness or amiability. They are likely to come from the Navy.’ He sighed, breath vapourising in the chill air. ‘I disliked the sea immensely. The men are cold and hostile, the masters brutal. No human feeling. I’m a pitiful romantic.’  
‘No, you’re not.’ Frankenstein replied, abstractedly. He seemed more than a little on edge and when somebody happened to walk by them he started, then looked fearfully about himself, awfully shaken.  
‘You okay?’  
‘Yes.’  
It was beginning to grow dark, the sinking sun struggling through the fog, and so they made their way east and Frankenstein hailed a cab for his own rooms were near to St James. Walton was concerned as he watched him standing there in his long, black coat, a vaguely troubled look knitting his countenance. How he had been of late, Walton wondered, as they said good-bye, whether it were wrong to let him home on his own. 

The next time that he called at Frankenstein’s rooms, he found him half asleep and barely dressed. The place was a mess, with papers and plates and foreign literary volumes everywhere, as his friend sat hunched over the table in a dressing gown, barely coherent. Walton had overheard in the library that they were considering releasing him from his job, for they believed him to be incapable of it. He always finished work before Walton was done studying, and he would go down to the ground floor and wait for him, sitting in a chair reading a book or guiding Walton on matters of physics, but recently he was likely to fall asleep, as though  not getting sufficient rest at night, and the dark circles beneath his eyes were deepening. The slightest noise would startle him. After a couple of minutes, Walton said, ‘I saw the doctor coming down Fenchurch, earlier.’  
‘You’ve not been talking about me?’ Frankenstein snapped, looking up.  
‘It was casual conversation, we made polite talk. He asked how you had been keeping.’  
‘Did he now?’  
‘He did.’ Walton paused, swallowing. ‘I told him, how you were.’  
‘I don’t dispute it.’  
‘He - suggested that you try laudanum.’  
‘Oh, not that again!’ Frankenstein dismissed him wryly, sitting slightly straighter. ‘I’ve taken it before. It does little.’ He reached across to press Walton’s hand, and Walton noticed a tremor. ‘I am fine, Walton. Truly. It warms me that you are so concerned for me, but there is no need. It is just that...I did not expect Him to be here and, well...I don’t know what to do.’  
‘We should find him and kill him.’  
‘If it would not send a man insane. He is elusive, a genius, almost. I spent years of my life trying to do just that and now I can only wait for him to appear.’  
‘But not on your own, Victor.’ Walton’s eyes were beginning to fill. ‘I’m going to help you.’ Frankenstein could feel his own eyes wetting. 

A collection of paintings opened up to the public for the first time, in a building called the National Gallery. It was the sort of amusement that Walton lived for and Frankenstein, too, had an appreciation for art - so they wandered room to room in dreamy fascination. The Gallery was thronged with visitors, however, and many crowded the works of the most famous artists, talking in loud voices. ‘They are fools and I hate them.’ Walton muttered more than once, trapped behind a large group of people that did not appear to be going anywhere any time soon. ‘I would prefer to look at copies at home.’ He turned to his left where a portly gentleman was gabbing ostentatiously. ‘I would not be surprised for them to know absolutely nothing and to care less. They are simply trying to be fashionable.’ He side-eyed a  man eating a pork pie with their mouth open. ‘Disgusting.’  
‘People have become pigs.’’ Frankenstein was also impatient, tired and having been walked into twice. ‘Why is everybody so rude?’ 

In a quieter room an elderly man sat on the benches, sketching before a portrait. Walton noticed that, occasionally, the man looked over at Frankenstein who stood a little way off, admiring a mountain scene. He turned to Walton, startling him. ‘I would like to draw your companion. If it would be no trouble to either of you? It would do me a great pleasure. I like the way that he is dressed - is he English? - and he has a lovely face, remarkable.’ Walton gave a shy smile. ‘He’s from Geneva.’ The man got to his feet slowly, which seemed to cause him great pain, being frail and of a weak posture, and he staggered over to Frankenstein. Walton cursed himself for not offering to help, or for not at least asking Victor for the man. ‘Would you sit for me?’ He heard the old man say, and saw Victor nodding. 

Frankenstein sat on the bench opposite the man and he sketched him, commenting on his eyes. ‘They’re beautiful,’ Walton agreed, and Frankenstein looked at him curiously but smiled. ‘Why do you not sit with him? I will draw you both.’ said the man, and so he did. As they were leaving, Walton said ‘I meant it, you know. That you have beautiful eyes. You are incredibly handsome.’ Frankenstein’s face seemed to colour slightly.  
‘I would not say so.’ He looked down. Then, ‘Do you mean it?’  
‘How could I not.’ Walton looked into his pretty blue eyes, then leaning in closer kissed him gently on the nose.  
‘You could do it properly.’ Frankenstein whispered, staring at him and feeling somewhat breathless.  
‘Do what?’ Walton could barely get his words out, looking away uncomfortably.  
‘This.’ And Victor pressed his mouth against his. It was a warm and lovely kiss. It did not last for long; they moved apart, warily regarding each other and hoping that nobody had seen them. Yet when it became clear that they were alone, Victor linked his hand with Walton's. 

Despite this, as they walked down a darker street, Walton noticed Frankenstein looking tensely about himself as though worried that something would come from the shadows to grab him.


	7. A Piccadilly Townhouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really don't know what I think of this chapter, but it is what it is and introduces my OCs who you may or may not be accompanying for a while as they will contribute towards the greater themes- but please, if you don't like them, if they don't work, let me know. This is to be a story about Walton and Victor, above all else.

It was within those next few weeks that Walton and Frankenstein decided to move in together. They took up rooms on King Street; on the second floor of a tall and thin townhouse, reasonably priced considering its proximity to Piccadilly and the more fashionable districts. ‘Money is not an issue for me,’ Frankenstein had insisted; after informing Walton that he would pay the most of it and waving away his remonstrations. ‘Do you know what a councillor is, in Geneva? Aristocracy!’ He said, with the hint of a self-deprecating smile. Then taking his hand and with a strange look in his eye he blurted ‘God knows I owe you,’ before moving away too quick for Walton to make the semblance of a response. Later with an attempt to cuddle up to him, Walton whispered ‘You do not owe me anything at all,’ but met only with silence and stiffness. The place came furnished but began to look exceedingly warm when fitted with the addition of their numerous books, papers, rugs, blankets and Walton’s battered old settee. Indeed, books and papers were the only thing in Frankenstein’s possession - an ascete in all else, like the Spirit of Solitude. Yet there was more - much more - with which the rooms on King Street came. The sphere in which Walton had previously existed was broadening unnaturally to include what had before seemed mere shadows moving about the perimeter, faceless and undefinable. Life was moving forward, he reflected one night, as he tried to stoke up the failing embers in the fireplace. Vision was becoming more nuanced. It was a large part of his personality to become disenchanted and withdraw, but there seemed less reason for that bitterness now. Perhaps he was maturing. And yet he did not know. No, it was still there. Disatisfaction. Irritation. Not with Frankenstein, but the rest of them. He sighed, and poked at the hearth. Frankenstein had gone to bed without a word. It was beginning to seem as though the creature never left them. Walton found himself seeking its form among crowds, anticipating it when rounding a corner, expecting it waiting there in the dark outside their window. 

Shortly after they had taken up the tenancy, he had been interrupted by a handsome young man standing in the hallway. He had auburn hair and a sort of innocence written across his countenance; exacerbated by a wide mouth that slightly ruined his aspect and yet made him seem all the more companionable. ‘Hello,’ he said, coming over to the staircase. It looked as though he were about to shake hands, but then he stopped himself. ‘Joseph Fernshaw,’ he grinned. ‘New?’  
‘Yes. Yes, although I have been in London quite a while now.’  
‘Wonderful! Quite wonderful! I am a London man myself, born and raised. Well! And your name?’  
‘Robert Walton.’ As they went on, Walton found himself warming to his accoster. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ He asked eventually, forgetting that he had been about to resume his reading. There was an old bottle stashed somewhere in the rooms.  
‘At,’ Fernshaw inspected his watch, ‘Three O’clock?’ he beamed.  
‘It is five somewhere in the empire, is that not what they say?’ Walton stumbled over his words, but a smile played at the corner of his lips.  
‘It is, it is,’ Fernshaw chuckled, following him up the staircase. ‘You are becoming a true Londoner! Drink, always drink! It turns the cogs ‘round, so they say.’ 

Fernshaw waited as Walton fetched the glasses, until he clumsily gestured ‘you can sit down,’ and was rewarded with another wide smile. He soon found out that the man was training to be a surgeon, having left Cambridge before what would have been a meritless graduation. ‘So I am your old enemy,’ he laughed, not understanding that Walton had never matriculated at Oxford. There were financial troubles upon his father’s death and he had always desired ‘to be handling those leeches - fascinating, isn’t it?’, so when it came to taking an apprenticeship he did not consider it a degradation. There was something affirmative about the way in which he spoke, and Walton rarely interjected so as not to interrupt his rapid, enthusiastic flow. He was not an intellectual, he admitted, but politely enquired into Walton’s interests and listened rapturously - before running off again on his own impetus, suddenly proclaiming a curious passion for the Slavic languages. ‘Very useful where my practice is, Southwark you see,’ he said earnestly. ‘A wonderful language - the folk tales are very nice - that poor country-’ and so he went on. Frankenstein came into the room then, so pale that he might have been translucent, having slept some hours, and seeing the young stranger he said quietly ‘how do you do? And sat down in the chair opposite. Occasionally he contributed something, but his mind faded out as though facing backwards from the conversation. He picked assiduously at the cuticle of his thumb and supposed that it was all customary politeness in any case - responding affably enough whenever a word was directed at him, which was not often. About an hour later, Fernshaw stood up, excused himself, and said that he had to get along to meet a man and pick up instruments. ‘Ah, good thing you are not using them,’ Frankenstein smiled.  
‘I might well do,’ he said, ‘a bottle wouldn’t touch me! My hands are as steady as a seamstress’ - just a pity most of what I do is cutting them open.’ He paused in the doorframe. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve met Mr Attlee? You must come to dinner tonight! Go down and speak to him and I bet - no, no, I will speak to him, upon my return! You will be welcome!’ He left. Walton poured a glass and handed it to Frankenstein, who inspected the bottle sleepily.  
‘It’s from Lausanne,’ Walton said, ‘is it like what you are accustomed to?’  
‘I am not a connoisseur,’ he replied in a low murmur, and drank it back quickly. 

Mr Attlee had a small oak table in the drawing room, that they sat around. He was a pleasant, if rather serious man, who talked slowly and methodically; tapping his pipe absently against the tablecloth whenever he was not smoking it.  
He smiled at Fernshaw in a way that would have appeared fatherly had there not been all of three years difference between them - calling his Cambridge escapades his very own ‘Canterbury Tales.’ It unnerved Frankenstein to find a small ginger cat weaving between his legs under the table throughout the evening, and despite moving his legs it came still closer and eventually settled down at his feet; tale swinging back and forth against his breeches, the feel of which he hated. Attlee served port from a decanter and began to talk about his voluntary work at the new soup kitchen in Limehouse. ‘It is easy to be seduced by London, depending on what side of the coin you are granted your bearings,’ he proclaimed at length, running a grey eye over Walton as he took a long drag from the pipe.  
‘I have seen the worst of things, but it is nice to have hopes,’ Frankenstein replied, fiddling with his glass. He had refused drink, being not particularly keen on it.  
‘Hope, yes. But for the future - for change. That is what we should hope for, not some fleeting vision of splendor, hung like a gauze upon the Thames. May it evaporate in the full light of day. But things are improving, if slowly. What with France and America, it seemed as though the general feeling was - well - as though people were beginning to realise. They are their own enemy by this point. They have them by the entrails, if only they believed-’  
‘You port revolutionary!’ Fernshaw piped in.  
‘Oh shut up, revolutionaries are all air,’ he replied good naturedly.  
‘‘But if you want liberté you cannot have égalité-’ Frankenstein interjected. ‘And whichever side of the coin, we all have our cross to bear. Is why I do not denounce the Christian religion entirely - we cannot lose sight of man as a fallen being. Each development produces its own set of flaws, for somebody else to deal with.’  
‘Indeed.’ Attlee looked at him hard. ‘You are not be taken in by Platonics?  
‘No, he will not! Do not attempt it!’ Walton laughed, holding out his glass as Attlee lifted the decanter.  
‘We are mere animals,’ Frankenstein began, trailing off.  
‘Don’t let her trouble you,’ Attlee said, noticing him grimace as the cat twisted beneath his legs. ‘Ami - come here, you irritant,’ he looked under the table and motioned to her.  
Fernshaw bent down and scooped up the small thing, placing it on his lap. Walton patted her awkwardly, but she continued to stare at Frankenstein with her large yellow eyes.

On the settee later that night, Frankenstein leant back against the armrest looking over his students’ work, but not entirely paying attention. Walton snuggled into him. Frankenstein’s arms were wrapped around him in a way that made him feel safe and protected, pulling him closer to his chest. He was drained and filled with circling thoughts of guilt, recalled to mind by the fact that he knew Miss Sutton was in town and that he was probably doing wrong by avoiding her. He often questioned what he could have done, and possibly what he should have done - and he wanted to tell Frankenstein about it, but he tried to push it away. Talking about the situation would only entrench it, he imagined. Was it sin, he wondered, to throw himself out of a comfortable life, coming to the capital and spending his thus striving for something men with nothing were meant for - when there was no excuse to avoid the life at ‘home’? Wherever home was. God, he did not want that marriage. He noticed that Frankenstein had removed one of his hands to his stomach. ‘Are you okay?’  
‘I often have this feeling,’ he began, as though hesitant to say so, ‘as if there were insects crawling, gnawing away at me.’  
Walton turned, and lay a hand against Frankenstein’s lower stomach, over the thin linen of his shirt. He stroked gently. ‘It feels normal to me,’ he said, perplexed, ‘you have this often?’  
‘Yes.’  
He continued to stroke soothingly, and Frankenstein tensed and seemed to recoil, uncomfortable.  
‘It’s okay, relax.’  
‘I don’t feel as though this house is safe.’  
‘What?’  
‘It is dreadful.’ He sat up, then began pacing the floor. Walton watched with concern. His eyes had a faraway - even a wild - look to them. Standing then, he went over to him and Victor suddenly held him tight, and kissed his forehead softly. Walton went to embrace him, hand brushing against his hip bone as he did so. Frankenstein got visibly upset at this.  
‘Victor?’  
‘Please don’t hurt me.’ He sounded panicked, or close to tears. Walton did not understand, but pulled him close and whispered ‘It’s going to be alright my friend, it’s going to be alright.’ From where he stood he could look over Frankenstein’s shoulder at the fog swirling outside the window, lit eerily by the oil lamps. ‘Hang on a moment,’ he said as gently as he could, and went to pull the curtains shut.


	8. A Silly Hour to be Asking For a Gun

It was a damp night. Frankenstein watched it from his window, lost in thought. The rain blurred the streets into a drear watercolour, and the darkness seemed to lodge itself in his chest, where it made desolation of his soul. ‘Dark night of the soul,’ he whispered amusedly. An alchemical term. 

Yet it was only his own burdened conscience making itself known. Nobody else out there, braving the night or otherwise, would feel it. 

And he was, all appearances to the contrary, labouring under an immense sickness. Not, of course, that there was anybody about to take account. There he was, cloistered away in the shadows of his room like a sickened old priest. His heart beat fast and he felt unaccountably giddy and he could not go on like this. Something had to be done. 

If he was to take action, Walton was not to know about it. That was the first conclusion. He regretted dragging him into the mess in the first place and tried to avoid talking it about it at all now. Some stupid knot that would never really be untangled. He sighed. He had really had enough. Something would have to be done. 

Fernshaw opened his door sleepily to find Frankenstein stood in the hallway. He became confused when he saw the disturbed look writ upon his countenance.  
‘May I ask a favour? Can I borrow your gun?’  
‘Why on earth? At this hour!’ Fernshaw chuckled uneasily. ‘Getting a head start on the Islington hunt?’  
‘Ah, something like that.’  
‘I think that you should come in and sit yourself down,’ he opened the door a little wider. ‘I was about to go to bed, I must be up early. But something is not right, is it?’ He seemed all politeness, but there were notes of warning in his tone.  
‘Don’t trouble yourself. It’s something that I cannot really explain. But that isn’t important-’  
Fernshaw made as though to reach out and touch his hand, yet looked awkward about it. He did not know Frankenstein very well.  
‘I am not going to let you hurt yourself,’ he said then, a new tenderness resting in his voice.  
‘That isn’t my intention.’  
‘Then what is? Come off it, these are silly hours to be asking for a gun.’  
Frankenstein gave no answer but pushed past him into the room.  
‘Stop! What are you doing?’ He seized the rifle before he could get at it. ‘Look at you, shaking like a leaf. I’ll not let you have it like that.’  
‘There is an imminent problem and things of which you are not aware. That you could not be aware. Trust in me for a moment, Fernshaw.’  
‘Do you want me to fetch Walton?’  
‘As if I am his ward?’  
‘As if you are not in your right mind.’  
Now Frankenstein was crouched at the table legs, rifling through a medical chest. Fernshaw stood by in amazement as he watched him pull out the bleeding bowl, several knives and a pair of tongs. Nothing that would be of use. ‘I must have a gun,’ he muttered. ‘Give it to me, please.’ He looked up plaintively.  
‘No.’ Fernshaw said.  
Frankenstein flourished a scalpel and lunged at him.  
‘Put that down!’  
‘There are things in this world that would make you mad to realise the possibilities! Matters and matter that you might never imagine. I ask you for the gun because there is something that I have to deal with, I alone, and don’t ask questions.’ Fernshaw was rapidly backing into the wall. ‘Give it to me!’  
He leaned in close and held the knife to the smaller man’s throat, making an indentation in the skin. Fernshaw gaped in a mixture of fear and disbelief. He did not dare to speak. Blindly flinging his arms behind him, he grasped hold of a vase and raised it as though it might act an equal weapon. Slipping from his fingers, it smashed onto the tiles in a frightful crash.  
Both men stared in horror.  
‘Oh God. I’m sorry.’ Frankenstein dropped the knife and breathed out, shakily. There was a sound of footsteps outside the door.  
‘What’s going on?’ Walton came in, Attlee hot on his heels. ‘We heard noise and shouting?’  
‘Dear fellow, are you okay?’ Attlee looked from the broken glass to Fernshaw, who was positively drained of colour.  
Yet suddenly he appeared to regain composure and his expression changed to cool authority.  
Straightening up, he walked to the broom cupboard. ‘We were having quite the heated debate and I knocked this vase in a broad gesture...startled us both! But no worry, I shall clean it up.’  
‘Frankenstein in a heated debate!’ Attlee smiled at him. Victor felt that he was not convinced. His eyes met Walton’s and he begged internally for him to pick up on his distress, but it was to no effect. Walton merely nodded his head in a brief acknowledgement before following Attlee out; after the neighbour had made sure that Fernshaw was well and bid him goodnight. He had been spending a lot of time in Attlee’s rooms lately. 

Frankenstein began to assist Fernshaw in clearing up, aware that he was watched with suspicion.  
‘You’re bleeding.’  
‘It’s not deep,’ he replied quietly, eyes on the task. He thought with a peculiar pleasure about running the shards over his skin, slicing himself open and bleeding out; and that he somehow could not irked him immensely. Why such extremity of feeling and lack of extremity of action? He rose to leave.  
‘Goodnight,’ he said to Fernshaw, who just nodded mutely.  
As he went, heart heavy, up the stairs his general sense of anxiety clung to his vitals and made him feel sick. When he chanced to look out of the window, he shuddered. 

Walton returned much later that night. Or morning, as it more accurately would have been termed. Frankenstein was sat in the drawing room chair, staring pensively into space.  
‘I thought that you would be in bed,’ Walton whispered, putting his arms around him. ‘I have a feeling some cuddles would not go amiss?’  
‘Mmff,’ Victor said as he was squeezed. Yet a slight happiness stirred within him. A droplet of blood, unfurling in a pool. ‘You’re right,’ he smiled faintly.  
‘Come to bed with me, then,’ Walton tried to pull him up and he hesitated as a familiar fear crept in.  
‘Victor, my angel? We need not do anything. Nothing like that.’ Walton took his hand and stroked his thumb along the back of it, before pressing it to his lips. ‘It’s okay.’  
‘I’m sorry.’  
‘Never apologise, my dear. I bet that I can carry you into bed,’ Walton grinned.  
Victor smiled back, clinging to him. He kissed his friend’s cheek.

Thereafter, Fernshaw seemed to regard Frankenstein with something of fear in his eyes. It was subtle, but unavoidable, should he happen to meet his gaze. A distance hung between them like a sheet of frosted glass. What was worse, there was a supposition now resting in the looks of the young trainee surgeon. Something that had Frankenstein down as unsavoury. A look that said, ‘You are mad.’


	9. A Grope in the Dark

It had been Attlee’s suggestion to visit the British Museum. He suggested it to Walton, who had then suggested it to Frankenstein, who wondered if he were never invited to these evening soirees on the supposition that he would not want to be there. Or if Walton just found Attlee and Fernshaw more conventionally entertaining? Often alone, he did not have the inclination to force himself on their company. And the few times that he had seen them, they spoke in such a humiliating manner - “Would you like a scone, Mr Frankenstein?” - “How was your afternoon, Mr Frankenstein?” - such a patronising tone, that it was really quite disgusting. So he would sigh, stretch out on the bed, look at the ceiling and try to shut out the distorted voices that came through the wall. Thus Walton found him the night he returned with plan in hand, listlessly staring into space. 

It faintly angered Frankenstein that he entered without warning, as though he were simply entitled to and he could have been in any state of sleep or undress! Although he was not one for testiness he muttered ‘You might have knocked.’  
‘Sorry,’ Walton sat down. ‘We’re going to the museum in Bloomsbury, do you want to come?’  
He explained and Frankenstein listened attentively, but his thoughts drifted to what he had recently heard in the library - that the building was essentially on its last legs and the ground floor harboured a large broken window. Mightn't it be interesting to visit at night? Perhaps they could sneak in? He had already conceived of it as a distraction from the evening miseries by the time Robert finished his explanation, but he acceded to the Attlee Idea and pulled himself into an upright position so as to seem more normal. The last few hours he had been unable to move due to exhaustion.  
‘It sounds a fantastic place,’ Walton continued, ‘But you know, Victor, the more that I learn the happier I become. All seems to slot into place, to make sense. And my mind is rarely unoccupied by some problem or illustration. I finally understand something of the world.’  
‘I find it different...everything becomes more confusing, conflicting,’ Frankenstein pushed a stray bit of hair out of his face. ‘I sometimes wonder if it were better to know nothing.’ Yet there again, in his friend’s presence he could feel his heavy limbs warming through, as though he were a lifeless sculpture awakening to feel, and his earlier doubts seemed banished all of a sudden. ‘I find myself learning some good things, though,’ he paused and thought how better to phrase these thoughts. _To trust and to open up to another person._  
‘Not much to learn right here and now though, is there?’ And before he could speak he caught Robert’s eyes loaded with desire as he leaned in to kiss him. He kissed back hesitantly, and did not part his lips to allow Walton’s tongue inside his mouth. Hands slid down to his hips; felt along the outside of his trousers; gently groped around his ballsack. He brushed them away but they came back and slipped inside of his waistband.  
‘No, Robert, stop, I don’t like it.’  
‘It’ll be fine.’  
He recoiled more at the words than the touch. Mistaken in how much Walton understood of him, he had supposed that - that his friend knew he was uncomfortable with things of this sort.  
‘Please,’ he whispered, shrinking away.  
‘What is it?’ Walton kissed him again. There was a nervous edge to his voice. ‘Do you not love me?’  
‘I…’  
‘Victor,’ he said, more gently. He reached into his trousers, touching his flaccid penis which stayed sadly flaccid and did not swell into his hand as he had hoped it would. ‘It’s okay-’  
‘Please don’t do this.’  
‘Why not? It’s as though you are calling me immoral for wanting you! Is that it? Well how can I help it? You make it seem as though it is just me that has these tendencies - the only sodomite going! While you are just good for it!’  
‘It’s not that at all, nothing about _morales._ Stop projecting your fears onto -’  
‘I am to be married, you know!  
‘You -’ Frankenstein looked at him inquiringly. ‘To whom?’  
‘Miss Carolina Sutton,’ Walton enunciated each syllable of the first name pointedly.  
‘The one that your aunt mentioned?’  
‘The very same. But I do not want her, I want you. And I do not have to do it. It’s just that there is everything I should be doing, and everything that I probably should not. And in such uncertainty as I am in it is clearly the safer option, and London, and...this…’  
‘Me,’ Frankenstein hung his head.  
‘Not you, no. It’s not you, Victor.’ Walton hugged him then, pulling him into his arms and against his chest in a tight embrace. ‘I am being so horrible. I am sorry.’ He turned his face toward him, cupping it in his hands and tracing his cheekbone with his thumb. ‘Beautiful Victor,’ and he kissed him on the nose just as he had done the first time. Victor allowed himself to be held but was beginning to feel a little sick by the situation. 

‘It is draining to be around Attlee and Fernshaw so much,’ Walton began to change the subject.  
‘Well you seem to like them an awful lot.’  
‘No, I don’t.’  
‘You like him more than me.’  
‘That’s not true!’  
‘Suit yourself.’  
‘He asks about you a lot.’  
‘He can fuck off.’  
‘That’s not very nice.’  
‘It’s what you just said, when you get down to it.’  
‘That’s...true. But he is a very kind man. A very nice man.’  
‘He is, perhaps. But he thinks me strange. I can tell. He is suspicious of me.’  
‘Everyone is suspicious of you! You think everybody is out to get you! You should listen to yourself, all this paranoia!’ Suddenly Walton was shouting. ‘I am sick of it! Why must I listen to this, day in, day out, somebody is out to get you, the creature is out to get you. You know that I think it is nonsense, don’t you? There is no creature, you are just raving mad!’ He got up. ‘I am going to bed.’  
‘Please don’t,’ Frankenstein sobbed, ‘Don’t leave me here.’  
‘Well, why not? If you are just going to complain and be paranoid. Tomorrow we go to the Museum, I don’t want to speak to you until then.’ He went out, closing the door with an air of authority. His guilt and tensions had dwindled his fuse, and Victor must suffer the brunt of it.  
_Quel diable?_ Victor muttered to himself through tears. He did not know what to do. _Get a hold on yourself, stop crying like a useless baby._ He got up with the stiffness of a man three times his age and went over to the bookshelf. _I hate all of this stuff. My mind doesn’t work. I can’t read it._ Among the various spines emblazoned in various languages - his red eyes scanned the shelf - there was a dusty old copy of 'Reveries of a Solitary Walker' and it made him emotional in a different kind of way. He disagreed with Rousseau, certainly, but he was from Geneva. The writing was also beautiful. He took it to bed and, instead of reading, held it to his chest as though comforting it; like a child cuddling a doll. It was a maladie du pays for some sort of bittersweet dreamscape, but as he lay there beneath the duvet, the old thing pressed against him and the wind and rain howling outside, he started to feel a bit better already.


End file.
